In recent years, as the functions of a mobile telephone such as a portable telephone or PHS (Personal Handyphone System) increase, connection to the Internet conventionally made by using a computer or a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) apparatus can be established only by a mobile telephone body. Consequently, by using a mobile telephone, homepages and the like can be browsed from almost any outdoor places in much the same way of making a call.
At present, to connect a portable telephone or the like to the Internet, a procedure of sequentially displaying a plurality of selection screens is taken. A mobile telephone which can be directly connected to the Internet by a single button operation is not seen in the market for the following reason. First, a portable telephone or the like is requested to have a very small size and a light weight of 100 grams or less, so that its surface area is small. Since the small surface of the telephone is already full of a liquid crystal display, keys, switch buttons and the like for telephone use, it is substantially impossible to provide a further key or switch button for functions other than telephone use. The main function of the portable telephone or the like is a telephone function as an inherent object, and the Internet connecting function is placed as one of a number of other functions. Connection to the Internet which has rapidly developed is at a groping stage in various aspects, and the ease-of-use or the like has not been fully examined.
Techniques of achieving various functions by using the limited number of keys and switches (buttons) are disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open (JP-A) Nos. 11-298635, 2000-22787, 2000-278385, and 2000-1888629. In JP-A-11-298635, to promptly retrieve and display a specific communication address such as a mail address or URL (Uniform Resource Locator) into a limited display space by a simple operation, personal information is preliminarily registered in a card and updated each use. When the personal information is extracted by the user, the extracted information is displayed on the display screen in accordance with the use frequency so that the user can easily select a desired communication address from the screen.
JP-A-2000-22787 discloses a technique of displaying a general function menu on a display screen, when a ten-key numerical pad is pressed long in such a state, and newly assigning a specific key in the ten-key numerical pad to a desired function or, even when the key has been already assigned, making assignment by overwriting. Consequently, without increasing the number of function keys, a desired function can be called. Similarly, JP-A-2000-278385 discloses a technique of assigning an arbitrary service function to an arbitrary numerical key, and calling the service function assigned to the numerical key by a combination of the key and a specific key.
Further, in JP-A-2000-188629, the user assigns an operation method to a desired key and, to improve ease of operation, an external key is provided. According to the timing of operating the external key or the way of operating the external key, the following operations are performed.
(1) When the external key is depressed during call receiving operation, a call is received.
(2) When the external key is depressed during speech communication, the call is disconnected.
(3) When the external key is depressed long for predetermined time or longer in a standby state, the function set by the user (beeper sound canceling mode, driving mode (mode of transmitting a message that the user is driving), a message taking mode, and the like) is executed. By depressing the external key long, the function set by the user is executed.
However, the conventional mobile telephones disclosed in the above applications intend to deal with the increase in functions, they do not disclose but the technique of facilitating connection to the Internet. The reason for this is that, as described above, it is substantially impossible to provide a further key r switch button for functions other than telephone use. In the future, however, it is certain that importance is attached to the Internet connection function more than the telephone function. It is expected that connection can be established to the Internet by a simple operation (procedure).